Moringa oleifera

Two things finally gave up on me as the new year took its first tentative steps into becoming. The passing of the first made me feel as if I’d lost a good friend. The second one continues to linger, but its faltering left me in a panic so hysterical and a sadness so deep that I sought a support group (hilarious really, Missus I-can-do-this-on-my-own-thank-you-very-much, finally asked for help).

The first one to reach the end of its path was my good old trusty electric breast pump. A gift from my aunt, it was Woog’s best bet at partaking from his mommy’s fresh milky goodness when she resumed work four years ago, and it was Eli’s as well…up until recently, when, despite Atch’s conscientious efforts at repair, maintenance and replacement of parts, it finally gave up its feeble ghost.

Almost immediately and all too soon, my milk ducts followed (oh woe! oh discordia!) I was in a state of denial, convinced that the success of motherhood depended on a neverending supply from the mommy pumps. And Eli barely six months old!

Who else can feel as useful and as needed as a breastfeeding mother? The very idea of being the beloved baby’s primary source of sustenance. The endless nights of jumping up at said beloved baby’s cries and the offering of one’s breasts to be suckled dry. The stinging cracked nipples. The muscle-constricting drum-tightness of mammaries screaming to be emptied. All that bleary-eyed sacrifice eventually becoming a source of righteous pride: here stands before you a nursing mother.

Even if my milk had slowed from its previous squirty gush, Eli still woke me every two hours in the night, like clockwork. He still fed for the usual half-hour before falling asleep. But the suspicion that I had become nothing more than this huge human pacifier wouldn’t go away.

I went online at my favorite parenting forum, seeking a solution, even going as far as inquiring if it were my modest bustline responsible for the dwindling milk supply.

And among those wonderful fellow mommies’ suggestions of increasing fluid intake, frequent nursings and imbibing cerveza negra (black beer), I found this: Moringa oleifera. The malunggay leaf, that bitter vegetable and bane of my childhood. More importantly, it came in capsule form (very convenient should I start gagging on a surfeit of malunggay-based broths). I went out and got some. I also bought a manual glass breast pump which promptly fell and broke (nerves? Nah, just the looming prospect my impending milk extinction).

Eli isn’t complaining, even if he has to work quite a bit to get his quota of milky goodness. He’s a very complacent baby, particularly now that he’s started working his gums around his first solids: what’s a trickle of milk when there’s that fantastically yummy banana & honey-flavored oatmeal to look forward to? He seems to say.

Ouch.

But I continue to take my malunggay pills religiously, hoping to delay the inevitable. And maybe, just maybe, prolong my usefulness – if not for my baby’s sake, then for mine.